DailyTech - California Attorney General Charges HP Insiders in Spy Probe

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IT California Attorney General Charges HP Insiders in Spy Probe
Michael Hoffman (Blog) - October 5, 2006 1:22 AM

9 comment(s) - last by ted61.. on Oct 5 at 12:35 PM

The HP spying scandal is now a criminal case!

The California Attorney General filed felony charges on Patricia Dunn and four others stemming from an illegal investigation into Hewlett-Packard's boardroom leaks. Kevin Hunsaker, former HP senior attorney and ethics director, was charged with three outside investigators, Matthew DePante, Bryan Wagner, and Ronald DeLia. Each person is facing four felony charges – unauthorized access to computer data, identity theft, the use of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information, and conspiracy charges. Mark Hurd, current Chief Executive Officer of HP, is not being charged at this time.

Hunsaker was the leader of the team that was used by Dunn to find the media leaks. According to official documents, Hunsaker was fully aware that deception was used to gather information. DeLia, the operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions, was told to work alongside Dunn during the investigation.

Speculation about possible charges have been circulating for several weeks now. Dunn resigned after the scandal broke several weeks ago. Her attorney recently said, “These charges are being brought against the wrong person at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons.” Several other high ranking HP officials have also been publically humiliated because of the case.

The controversy started after it was unveiled that HP hired a company who used pretexting – a practice that involves obtaining phone records through deception – while trying to discover who was leaking boardroom information to the media.

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I thought it was called social engineering?

By captchaos2 on 10/5/2006 8:40:41 AM , Rating: 2

Ok, so some investigative methods are illegal, then what can a company do to protect themselves from intellectual property theft and the invasion of the company's privacy?

RE: I thought it was called social engineering?

By Pythias on 10/5/2006 9:05:34 AM , Rating: 2

You dont think it should be illegal to obtain someone elses ssn under false pretenses?

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RE: I thought it was called social engineering?

By captchaos2 on 10/5/2006 9:47:47 AM , Rating: 2

Considering how many places used to use my SSN for my identification back in the day, I would guess that the whole world has my SSN by now.

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RE: I thought it was called social engineering?

By ted61 on 10/5/2006 12:35:11 PM , Rating: 3

I don't like the idea of my boss (or the government) putting cameras and recording devices in my house so they can keep tabs on me.

I think everyone that had something to do with the spying should be put in jail. If they do stuff like that to board members, imagine how they treat the peons.

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